The African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) promotes and advances the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book series, contests, workshops, and seminars and through its collaborations with publishers, festivals, booking agents, colleges, universities, conferences and all other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa.

The winner of APBF’s 2025 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets is Jedidiah Mugarura for their collection Nyamuteza. Mugarura will receive a $1000 USD cash award and publication of their manuscript as part of the University of Nebraska Press’ African Poetry Book Series.

The judging panel for the Sillerman Prize consists of Chris Abani, Gabeba Baderoon, Aracelis Girmay, John Keene, Matthew Shenoda, Mahtem Shiferraw, and Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, with Kwame Dawes, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund.

Aracelis Girmay praised Nyamuteza, saying “I am quite astounded by the work–the writer’s intellectual brilliance, capaciousness, the assured narrative sensibility even as we are carried by nuance and difference.” Chris Abani also had high praise for Mugarura’s manuscript, noting Nyamuteza is “an extraordinary collection along the lines of Song of Lawino but [also] original.”

Jedidiah Mugarura is a storyteller descended from the people of Nkore. Their storytelling seeks to find and reimagine the missing vowels to the songs we once sang before colonial violence, to project a future of agency and possibility for those still negotiating their bodies in empire. Their poems appear in Brittle Paper, Humber Literary Review, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, and Ampersand Review. You can read their prose in issue 5 of Lolwe and issues 133 and 136 of Transition. Their play, “Tomorrow Never Came,” was staged in New York in June 2025 by the National Queer Theater.

The judges are also pleased to name Rabha Ashry’s manuscript “Spirals” as an honorable mention. 

“Trespass” by Jamila Osman, “Forms of Commitment” by Hazem Fahmy, “Dear Zoe” by Alain Jules Hirwa, “Amalgam of Blood and of Gold” by Timi Sanni, “A Brief History of Seeds” by Wale Ayinla, and “ya kharabi/o my ruin” by Antony Fangary were all finalists this year.

Mugarura is the thirteenth poet to win the annual Sillerman Prize, following Michael Immossan in 2024 for All that Refuses to Die, Abu Bakr Sadiq in 2023 for Leaked Footages, Tares Oburumu in 2022 for Origins of the Syma Species, and Sherry Shenoda in 2021 for Mummy Eaters.

The 2026 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets will be open September 15 through December 1 to submissions of manuscripts by African poets who have not yet published a full-length collection. For more information and to submit, click here.

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This announcement was originally shared by the African Poetry Book Fund.